Ethical Matters: A History of Protest and Public Space in England

Historian Katrina Navickas explores the radical history of the increasing restrictions against protest in England’s public spaces. From the long history of contests over Trafalgar Square, Hyde Park, Cable Street and Kinder Scout, as well as sites in towns and rural areas across the country, Katrina reveals how protesters claimed these spaces as their own commons, resisting their continuing enclosure and exclusion by social and political elites.

She investigates famous and less well-known demonstrations and protest marches, from early democracy, trade union movements and the Suffragettes to anti-fascist, Black rights and environmental campaigners in more recent times, offering positive as well as troubling lessons on how we protect the right to protest.

Katrina Navickas is Professor of History at the University of Hertfordshire. She is a historian of protest and social movements in Britain, with a focus on how protesters shaped space, place, and landscape She is the author of Protest and the Politics of Space and Place, 1789–1848 (2016) and Loyalism and Radicalism in Lancashire, 1798–1815 (2009).